Practical applications for the reconstruction of the past

The Darién region of Panama is the only land bridge connecting North, Central and South America. Nowadays home to descendants of African enslaved peoples, Indigenous peoples (Emberá, Wounaan, and Guna), and mestizos, Darién has been and still is fundamental to connectivity, cultural interchange, and…

Mr. J. Sun defended his thesis on 21 March 2018.

This book investigates the effects of brain lesions in the left hemisphere, specifically Broca's area, on the production and perception of vowels, of word tones and of the linguistic use of sentence melody.

Yi-Wen Cheng defended her thesis on 28 May 2015

Situated at the crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Spanish Philippines offer historians an intriguing middle ground of connected histories that raises fundamental new questions about conventional ethnic, regional and religious identities.

Százhalombatta-Földvar is a Bronze Age fortified tell settlement on the right bank of the river Danube, 30 km south of Budapest in Hungary. It is one of the best preserved temperate climate tells in Europe and well-known for the extraordinarily rich data it produces. Since 2014 Leiden students are welcomed…

Study Archaeology at Leiden University. Learn about a full range of theoretical, analytical and field methods from some of the world's leading archaeological researchers.

A cultural sequence of western coastal French Guiana from 5000 BP to present

Direct radiocarbon dating of human remains is crucial for the accurate interpretation of prehistory. Yet given the scarcity of prehistoric human remains, direct dating is often too destructive for important fossils. The reduction of sample size necessary for dating bone is therefore of great interest…

The goal of the ANASTASIS project is the analysis and publication of early medieval (Merovingian) cemeteries in the Netherlands (c. 500 – 750 AD).

Audrey Heijns defended her thesis on 28 June 2016

Can we link multiple components from herbal extracts with their biological activities?

On the 30th of September Christine Ketel successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Lecture, China Seminar

Princess Beatrix was a guest at the opening of the conference on ‘Chinese Buddhism and the Scholarship of Erik Zürcher’ in Leiden on 12 February. Buddhism researchers from all parts of the world came together to reflect on the work of Leiden sinologist Erik Zürcher.

The emissions of the Chinese industrial sector alone comprise 24.1% of global emissions (7.8 GtCyr−1 in 2015). This makes Chinese industrial emissions of unique national and international relevance in climate policy. This study reports a literature survey that quantitatively describes the evolution…

Joanna Krenz defended her thesis on 15 May 2018.

Update : August 2017 Dr Harco Willems

The rapid economic development of recent decades has made China a destination for migrants from all parts of the world. What does Chinese migration policy say about the priorities and functioning of this global power? PhD candidate Tabitha Speelman has conducted research on this.

Generally the data from remote sensing surveys - the scanning of the earth by satellite or aircraft in order to obtain information about it - is screened manually in archaeology. However, constant monitoring of the earth's surface causes a huge influx of data of high complexity and high quality. To…

Caribbean archaeological heritage is threatened by natural impacts but also increasingly by economic developments, often resulting from the tourist industry. The continuous construction of specific projects for tourists, accompanied by illegal practices such as looting and sand mining, have major impacts…

This handbook provides a resource for those already familiar with some kinds of micro-particles who wish to learn more about others, or for those just starting out in the study of microremains who wish to have a broad understanding about microscopic archaeology.

When Henriëtte Hoffman was ten years old she was enthralled by The Last Emperor, a 1987 film about the twelfth and last emperor of the Manchu dynasty. It was an interest that eventually led to a five-month stay in Chengde in China for her Asian Studies research master’s programme. During her time in…

Archaeology

Apps that can precisely identify shards, coins or heel bones: archaeology has embraced artificial intelligence. Alex Brandsen is working on a search engine that scans vast quantities of text from an archaeological viewpoint.

The goal is to establish an intuitive search and querying service that allows researchers to quickly retrieve the most valuable digital resources, in order to allow them to integrate and synthesise the results into a coherent narrative of the past. The current focus of the project is to implement…

Chinese export paintings have a much greater cultural-historical and artistic value than was previously thought in the Netherlands, according to external PhD candidate Rosalien van der Poel. She advocates making these works accessible to the general public. PhD defence 30 November.

Steven Frost defended his thesis on 6 June 2017

Xinrong Ma defended her thesis on 13 February 2018